Archive for April, 2009

Ezra points to a little chart showing that 88% of Americans name an automobile as a necessity (down 3% from 2006!), and writes: One of the quirks of the elite political debate is that it tends to occur in dense cities with extremely impressive transportation infrastructures. DC. New York. Places where cars are more of […]

Let’s check in on the economy, shall we? Yesterday’s output report was the source of plenty of hand-wringing; the extremely bearish Duncan Black wrote, for instance, “I don’t think people really get how bad this is getting….”. I don’t think that’s at all the right way to think about this. For one thing, the number […]

Well, I didn’t think I’d be back here so soon. Not for the first time in my life, and not for the last, my grand and best-laid plans failed to work out as I’d hoped. The demise of Portfolio is a major disappointment, but I’m working to keep it all in perspective. I’d give my […]

Dear readers, I have some news. I have decided to accept an invitation from Portfolio.com to blog for them, in the Market Movers spot recently vacated by the excellent Felix Salmon, who’s now at Reuters. My new address is here (and the RSS feed is here), and if you surf on over you’ll see an […]

Everyone, and I mean everyone, is linking to this Brookings report on “job sprawl,” or the change in employment concentration, which updates previous numbers. From 1998 to 2006, as it happens, the percentage of jobs within 3 miles of central business districts fell, while the percentage of jobs more than 10 miles from central business […]

Matt on the Olympics: This article about Chicagoâ€™s bid to host the 2016 Olympics seems like as good a time as any to reiterate the idea that the International Olympic Committee should fix a permanent location for the Games. Presumably in Greece, but really just about anywhere would do. Even though competition is always fierce […]

There are positive signs out there for those looking for them. The latest results from the Wall Street Journal’s survey of economists indicate expectations of an end to economic contraction in September. That’s a bottom, keep in mind, which means that we’d still be months or years away from returning to trend output levels, months […]

There’s plenty of good news circulating today and helping to push markets upward. Wells Fargo reported a first quarter profit, and America’s trade deficit fell to its lowest level in nearly a decade. In fact, neither piece of information is that good. Wells profit may be have been boosted by some generous payments from AIG, […]

Annie Lowrey writes: Finally, in a macro sense, the Geithner plan is set up precisely to recapitalize the banks, create a market for the bad assets, and to get the assets off the banks’ books. Gaming the system does recapitalize the banks. It does bolster the market for the bad assets. And it does sequester […]